Prints documented the plight of the oppressed and commemorated the struggles and achievements of social reform.

The Bauhaus was founded in 1919 in the city of Weimar by German architect Walter Gropius (1883–1969). Its core objective was a radical concept: to reimagine the material world to reflect the unity of all the arts.

Can postwar art be understood as an exercise in calculated insanity? Taking this provocative question as its basis, this book explores the art and history of delirium from 1950 to 1980, an era shaped by the brutality of World War II and the rapid expansion of industrial capitalism. Skepticism of science and technology—along with fear of its capability to promote mass destruction—developed into a distrust of rationalism, which profoundly influenced the art of the times. Delirious features work by more than sixty artists from Europe, Latin America, and the United States, including Dara Birnbaum, León Ferrari, Gego, Bruce Nauman, Howardena Pindell, Peter Saul, and Nancy Spero. Experimenting with irrational subject matter and techniques, these artists forged new strategies that directly responded to such unbalanced times. Disturbing and challenging, the works in this book—in multiple media and often, counterintuitively, incorporating highly ordered and systematic structures—upend traditional notions of aesthetic harmony. Three wide-ranging essays and a richly illustrated plates section investigate the degree to which delirious times demand delirious art, inviting readers to “think crazy."

This exhibition presents a bold new history of American photography from the medium’s birth in 1839 to the first decade of the 20th century. Drawn from The Met’s William L. Schaeffer Collection, major works by lauded artists such as Josiah Johnson …

Genoa, well known as a seaport established in ancient times and as the birthplace of Christopher Columbus, emerged as a major artistic center toward the middle of the sixteenth century, sparked by the sea lord Andrea Doria's political leadership and ready patronage and the artist Perino del Vaga's arrival from Rome. The technically masterful, even boldly experimental, drawings and prints in this exhibition illustrate Genoa's growth by the early seventeenth century into an important regional artistic school. Some of the drawings were made as independent works of art, as for instance ones by Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, characterized by rich painterliness and dramatic content. Many sheets are preparatory drawings, which eloquently describe the Genoese tradition of illusionistic fresco painting that unfolded almost in its entirety within the splendid interiors of the new churches and palazzi erected on the Via Balbi and Strada Nuova (now Via Garibaldi). In addition to better-known artists—Luca Cambiaso, Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, Giovanni Battista Gaulli (Baciccio), Bernardo Strozzi, for example—the exhibition includes less-studied Genoese artists, such as Carlo Alberto Baratta, Giulio Benso, Bartolomeo Biscaino, Bernardo and Valerio Castello, Giovanni David, and Gregorio and Lorenzo de Ferrari, all of whom significantly influenced other artists both in Genoa and elsewhere in Italy. A number of years before his death, Jacob Bean, then Drue Heinz Curator, Department of Drawings, envisioned an exhibition of drawings and prints selected from New York collections that would highlight the work of Genoese artists between 1530 and 1800. Not only was Jacob very much the conceptual force behind the present exhibition, but he and the late Lawrence Turčić, then assistant curator, were also noted connoisseurs of Genoese drawings. Their discoveries are attested to by a large, mostly unpublished dossier of attributions to Genoese artists made during the course of more than a decade and kept in the archives of the Department of Drawings and Prints. It is in their memory that this exhibition has been mounted, with works selected by William Griswold, Nadine Orenstein, and Carmen Bambach, the latter two of whom also prepared the catalogue entries.

When the Spanish landed on the coast of what is today Peru in 1532, they encountered the socially complex, artistically vibrant Inca Empire, whose vast, geographically diverse domain encompassed almost the entire length of the rugged Andes. Inca master weavers and metalsmiths, building on thousands of years of local artisanal mastery, had created a spectacular body of imperial art whose bold, mostly geometric designs were powerful expressions of Inca identity and sovereignty. Within one generation that culture had been forever transformed by the establishment of the viceroyalty of Peru. The remarkable exchange of cultures that ensued brought Europe and the New World together through a vibrant trade in goods, services, and ideas, creating a unique society that was richer and far more intriguing than the mere sum of its influences. Tapestry weaving and silverwork, for centuries two of the primary art forms in the Andes, flourished during the colonial era, as many highly skilled indigenous artists were inspired by exotic new design sources form around the world. The refined weaving methods the Inca had cultivated were put to use crafting all manner of textile goods, from grand armorial hangings to meticulously woven garments, bedcovers and carpets. SIlverwork, too, was transformed, especially after the discovery of great lodes of the precious metal in the mountains above the town of Potosí, in modern Bolivia. Native metalworkers and European immigrant silversmiths alike struggled to keep pace with commissions, which included every variety of domestic object—from ewers, trays and basins to incense burners—as well as ecclesiastical pieces, such as the elaborate monstrances used to display the consecrated Host during Mass. Of the many dramatic changes brought about in Andean daily life and art during the viceregal period, none had as profound or lasting an impact as the introduction of Christianity. The patronage of the Roman Catholic Church, one of the most powerful forces in viceregal society, is still evident in the majestic cathedrals and churches of major cities such as Arequipa, Lima, and Cuzco, whose treasuries abound with beautifully worked liturgical vessels and implements, and in the many convents and smaller parishes scattered about the Peruvian and Bolivian countryside. Perhaps nowhere was the Baroque grandeur of colonial Peru more evident than in Cuzco, the former Inca capital, especially during the festival of Corpus Christi. This annual celebration evolved into a spectacular procession that was, in effect, a showcase for civic allegiance, Christian devotion, and material wealth. This unique volume illustrates and discusses in detail more than 160 extraordinary fine and decorative art works of the colonial Andes, including examples of the intricate Inca weavings and metalwork that preceded the colonial era as well as a few of the remarkably inventive forms this art took after independence from Spain. An international array of scholars and experts examines the cultural context, aesthetic pre-occupations, and diverse themes of art from the viceregal period, particularly the florid patternings and the fanciful beasts and hybrid creatures that have come to characterize colonial Andean art.

Evans worked with little concern for the ideological agenda or the suggested itineraries and instead answered a personal need to distill the essence of American life from the simple and the ordinary.

Chanel —The Costume Institute's major spring exhibition—will be presented at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from May 5 through August 7, 2005. The spirit of the House of Chanel will be re-created in a landmark presentation of iconic fashions from Coco Chanel to Karl Lagerfeld.